Channel 2 Action News is learning more about how maggots ended up in a sandwich a passenger bought at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport last week.
Channel 2's Amy Napier Viteri first reported the story on Tuesday. She obtained a copy of the inspection reports for La Petite France bakery which is based in Marietta and supplied the bread to the airport restaurant where the customer bought that sandwich.
Based on the Department of Agriculture report, inspectors found several critical violations when they the visited bakery.
According to the report, inspectors answered "no" when asked if the facility was clean and in good physical repair. They also found processing areas were not maintained free of insects, rodents and other pests.
Specifically, the report said inspectors found "fruit flies and flies noted in the dry storage warehouse, employees break room, around drains by muffin prep table."
The inspection came after passenger Joel Woloshuk recorded video with his cellphone of maggots crawling on a sandwich he bought last Wednesday at the Café Intermezzo franchise location in Terminal B at the airport.
"This isn't a moldy piece of bread. These are maggots. These are living organisms in a piece of food that someone served me," Woloshuk said.
A Clayton County Board of Health inspection found no citable violations at Café Intermezzo's airport location. The restaurant group's president told Viteri in a statement the problem "could not have been generated on our premises."
Café Intermezzo said they immediately ended their business relationship with the bakery adding, "All products from the vendor were removed."
In a statement, Café Intermezzo said, "Our team at Café Intermezzo takes tremendous pride in serving fresh, delicious, healthy food to more than a million guests annually. Earlier this week, we were notified a customer’s Take-Out sandwich from our licensed airport location appeared contaminated. We truly regret the isolated incident occurred. We are working to get all the facts. It has been determined the problem could not have been generated on our premises. However, as a quality control measure, the product sample is currently being analyzed by an independent laboratory."
Immediately upon notification of the incident, all products from the vendor were removed. Not a single crumb or slice of bread from the vendor remains in the facility.
The Department of Agriculture and La Petite France agreed to a cease and desist order while the bakery worked to address the violations Friday, which included "slime and black build-up inside the water sprayer used on ciabatta with cheese line."
According to inspectors, the facility resolved all areas of concern and the department lifted the cease and desist order.
"I want to see changes. This is not this is not a minor infraction," Woloshuk said.
Viteri reached out to the La Petite France and spoke with their president by phone who said it is not possible the problem with the maggots originated at their facility and they have been completely cleared to supply bread to other vendors.
“Anytime foreign objects are discovered in food it is an unfortunate incident. However, we steadfastly believe that the insects in this instance did not – and could not have – originated from our facility.
"When the news broke of this incident, our facility was immediately inspected by both the Departments of Agriculture and Aviation and there was no evidence of anything remotely similar to what they found at Café Intermezzo.
"It should also be noted that we’re a bakery. Everything is baked at temperatures that insects cannot tolerate and then either immediately shipped or frozen. The life-cycle stage of the insects shown in the media make it impossible for them to have originated here.
"Our commitment to providing high-quality, fresh baked goods to our customers is of utmost importance. We respectfully dispute that our facility was the origin of these foreign objects and look forward to learning their true source.”
Viteri spoke with someone from the Department of Agriculture's food safety division who said they can't say definitely where the bugs came from.
